Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/46

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26
ON THE BODILY SENSES.

hearing, with its appendages, consisting of a drum, a hammer and anvil, a stirrup, a labyrinth, a cochlea, &c., all again so admirably arranged, as to render sensible all the modifications of the air, and thus admit every possible variety of sound. Let me then ask you, whether, in these two single specimens of divine workmanship, you do not discover a skill and a wisdom as far exceeding all that is human, as heaven is above earth, or as Infinite is superior to finite.

But it is not my present intention to dwell merely on the external form and structure (astonishing and edifying as they are) of the several organs of your bodily senses; what I wish rather to impress on your mind is the importance of the uses, both temporal and eternal, both natural and spiritual, for which they are designed by the GREAT CREATOR. Permit me then to begin with the uses of the EYE; and, first, with its natural and temporal uses.

It cannot have escaped your observation, that the natural and temporal uses of the eye are both various and interesting, because daily experience must have taught you, that you are indebted to the instrumentality of this wonderful organ for all the multiplied gratifications resulting from the admission of natural light, and the images of natural objects, into the otherwise dark and empty chambers of your intellectual mind. For